The story

When Sen. Barack Obama accepts his party's presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, he will have experienced one of the most rapid -- and unexpected -- ascents in American political history.

Obama, an Illinois Democrat, burst onto the national stage in 2004, when he electrified the convention with a keynote address that called for the end of the divisive politics that have pitted Americans against each other.

"There's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America. There's not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America; there is the United States of America," Obama told the delegates. Read full article »